June 1862, Gen. Winfield Scott (ret.) weighs in

"General Scott on Southern soldiers. He says we have élan, courage, woodcraft, consummate horsemanship, endurance of pain equal to the Indians, but that we will not submit to discipline. We will not take care of things or husband our resources. Where we are, there is waste and destruction. If it could all be done by one wild desperate dash, we would do it. But he does not think we can stand the long blank months between the acts—waiting! We can bear pain without a murmur, but we will not submit to be bored, &c&c&c.
Now for the other side. They can wait. They can bear discipline. They can endure forever—losses in battle nothing to them, resources in men and materials of war inexhaustible. And if they see fit they will fight to the bitter end.
Nice prospect for us—as comforting for us as the old man's croak at Mulberry, 'Bad times, worse coming.'
Old Mr Chesnut says, 'We could not have kept slavery here a day, but the powerful government of the U.S.A. protected it for us.'"

14 March 1862, the subject of double standards

"There are no negro marital relations, or the want of them, half so shocking as Mormonism. And yet the U.S.A. makes no bones of receiving Mormons into her sacred heart.
Mr Venable said England held her hand over 'the malignant and the turbaned Turk' to save and protect him, slaves, seraglio, and all. But she rolls up the whites of her eyes at us. When slavery, bad as it is, is stepping out into freedom every moment through Christian civilization.
They do not grudge the Turk even his bag and Bosporus privileges. To a recalcitrant wife it is: 'Here yawns the sick. There yawns the sea'—&c.
And France, the bold, the brave, the ever free—she is not so tenderfoot in Algiers.
But then, 'you are another' argument is a shabby one.
'You see,' says Mary [Preston] sagaciously. 'We are white Christian descendants of Huguenots and Cavaliers, and they expect of us different conduct from mere Turks and Algerian pirates.'"